Authoring & Playwriting

I agree, Sara Ghadersahi. Believing in my writing talent, getting better at writing scripts, and learning more about screenwriting helped me pitch my scripts, sell short scripts, and get jobs.

Maurice Vaughan I wish you all the best and hope you make progress every day. Thank you for sharing your experience.

You're welcome, Sara Ghadersahi. Thank you. Best to you. I hope you make progress every day and have an incredible new year!

Wishing you a Happy New Year in advance!

Happy New Year, Sara Ghadersahi!

I feel like my obsession with scientific plausibility almost becomes a kind of mental illness for me—I spend too much time reinforcing it hh Banafsheh Esmailzadeh

Meriem Bouziani lol I feel that, it could be xD it can be hard to let go of but try it :)

Thank you, Meriem — beautifully put. I love the idea of mutual nurturing. When the work is honest, it really does feel like a living conversation rather than a one-way act of creation.

Yes, it’s a true, active conversation that only the creator truly knows, feels, and lives. Even when we share our work, no one can experience it the way we do the first time. Charmane Wedderburn

“Exactly — that first, private experience belongs only to the creator. Sharing the work invites others into it, but that initial conversation stays uniquely ours, and I think that’s part of what gives the work its pulse.’

Debbie Seagle Hahaha Wow indeed! Guess it's good you had some other eyeballs on it. I probably have, but very few of my family have read anything I've written, so it's moot HA!

Minh Nguyen I'm going to write characters (the ones I have witnessed) "like a soul in fiction" from now on! That's beautiful.

Debbie Seagle I've had to make a decision that I don't even bring up or offer or ask people I know to read stuff because I use familiar names and personalities ALL THE TIME.

Debbie — this is such an honest question, and I think many of us have been there. Drawing from real people is often where the emotional truth comes from, but there’s a moment where craft asks us to transform rather than transcribe. I’ve found that once a character moves beyond a single recognizable source and becomes a composite, the writing actually deepens — and the story gains more freedom. Your awareness here says a lot about your integrity as a storyteller.

Awwwh Thank you Charmane Wedderburn. I'm with you on: "Drawing from real people is often where the emotional truth comes from," I invent characters all the time & they become real to me, yet - I can't help it - some characters need an avatar... they are who they are, and personalities collide/merge.

GIRL, yes! This is by far the practice we PREACH on Monday's Coverage Report in the Writers' Room. We forget that the "audience" for screenplays is not the "butts in seats", but the actors, directors, cinematographers, production designers, etc. So, write for production, not perfection. We'll defer to novelists for the perfection! LOL

Karen "Kay" Ross My aim is to create characters actors want to play, design want to dress etc. And if they audience falls in love then that's an added bonus!

Lauren — this is such an important reminder. In screenwriting, momentum, clarity, and emotional truth often matter more than polish at the early stages. A script can still open doors if the core works — the refining happens through collaboration. Letting go of ‘perfect’ is often what allows the work to actually move forward.

Beautiful response Charmane Wedderburn this kind of thinking makes me want to quit publishing haha it's so freeing to hear!

I’m so glad it landed, Lauren — and please don’t quit publishing. That freedom is exactly what keeps the work alive. Perfection can wait; momentum is what opens doors.

“Meriem — I love this framing. ‘What if’ opens the door, but I’ve found it’s the follow-up questions that really deepen the world — questions like what does this cost the character, what are they avoiding, or what happens if they don’t change. Asking from different angles — emotional, moral, practical — seems to turn ideas into lived-in worlds rather than just concepts.

Yes, of course. ‘What if’ is the first step; the other questions lead to the creation of the entire world. Charmane Wedderburn

Exactly — ‘what if’ opens the door, and the questions that follow are what furnish the world. It’s in that questioning that the story starts to breathe.

What's the worst thing that could happen to my protagonist, and what's the best thing that could happen? These two questions lead me to wonder not only about the characters, but also about the plot and the protagonist's possible transformation arc.

Thank you very much—those are truly important questions for developing strong characters. I’ll definitely try them with my own characters as well Tania Cárdenas Paulsen

I think Dune’s perspective is a wise lesson for this question. We don’t have to imagine the unimaginable; we have to use the full potential of our minds to discover new perspectives. Minh Nguyen

I have dreams about the past and the future. In the past, I see different people—for example, an African woman in 1940, or a Chinese girl in 1850, and so on.

When I wake up and research what I saw, I discover that yes, someone really lived there at that exact time and place.

Sometimes I also dream about extraterrestrials and metaphysical or supernatural beings that I can't research or verify.

yeah dreams also could shape your imagination Rozbeh Rad

“Meriem — I think you’re touching something very real. No matter how far we stretch, imagination still seems to move through human perception — language, memory, emotion, pattern. But I wonder if the work isn’t to escape those limits, but to brush up against them. In trying to imagine the unimaginable, we may not create something truly ‘alien,’ but we do reveal the edges of what it means to be human — and that, in itself, feels like meaningful discovery.”

Yes, I love what you’re saying—we’re not really talking about aliens for their own sake, but using them to discover humanity in new ways Charmane Wedderburn

Hi, Kat Spencer. My main goal is finish rewriting my feature script. I started a short script yesterday. My goal is finish it this weekend.

Hello, Kat Spencer it’s a few things on my end, finalizing cyberpunk FPS art and touching up three additional IP bibles before the year wraps. If I can lock those in, I’ll feel good heading into the new year.

Kat — for me, it’s finishing the final pass on a key confrontation scene where the emotional truth has to land cleanly. It’s less about adding more, and more about stripping it back until the intention is unmistakable. Closing the year by locking that feels like the right kind of momentum.

I'm hoping to start the "ten" arc of Lunar Window by the New Year, as well as a rough outline for either Niveous Reverie or Paper Sunlight (ideally both, of course). Part of me wants to be crazy and finish all of these plus the latter half of Finding Elpis in the New Year, alongside Iron Rain/returning to Seed lol... but it'll all only be possible with the blessing of the writing gods...

Thanks for sharing the blog, Pat Alexander. It’s a must-read blog!

“But again, the idea is a seed, that’s it. Ideas are certainly useful, but only so far. A good idea will not be saved by poor execution, but a bad idea can be saved by excellent execution.” Definitely.

And AI can come up with ideas, loglines, etc. fast, but the quality isn’t there and it’s not human. The quality might get better, but AI will never be human. It hasn’t experienced love or heartbreak. It doesn’t know the dilemma of having to choose between paying rent or buying food. It didn’t grow up in the south and enjoyed southern hospitality. It doesn’t know what it’s like to have a crush on someone and be terrified to tell them.

I agree strongly with the idea that execution matters far more than ideas themselves. AI can generate ideas and loglines quickly, but it doesn’t replace lived experience, judgment, or craft.

I do think AI has a place in our workflows. I use it to help organize outlines, but all story content is mine, created by me. I’m transparent about that, and I keep logs for accountability. That clarity has mattered in conversations I’ve had with producers. I've faced that question already and keeping those logs is a must.

When I’ve tested AI-generated stories on their own, what I found was flat characterization and a lack of human logic or emotional depth. That reinforced my belief that AI works best as a tool, not a creator.

To me, it’s like a hammer: in skilled hands it’s useful; without skill, it just makes a mess. We still have to do the work.

Being Dyslexic its a great tool . THAT IT . in my opinion it cant right story's at all! I do end up screaming at AI for changing my story from time to time . if I don't tell it Not to touch the story . its soul use for me , research , spell check , grammar , format ,

Pat — this still rings true. Ideas may spark curiosity, but it’s the labor of execution, revision, and learning the craft that gives them weight and meaning. The danger isn’t new tools themselves, but the temptation to skip the hard, human work that turns an idea into something earned suggests this is as much a cultural issue as a technological one.

Thanks. This month- I've been a published author for 22 years and I realised-- I've switched mediums- even though I do still write novels and stories-- that I don't want to burn out in scriptwriting. I want to keep these ideas I've got flowing. I realised others might also get this way during this time of the year. Wanted to give some help that worked for me. Not everything works for everyone, but a lot of people have found help in the book itself-- picking and choosing items. It's what I did and it really helped at a time when I honestly thought I'd never write again.

You're welcome, Cynna Ael. Congratulations on being a published author for 22 years! I make really detailed outline for my scripts, so I don't usually have a problem keeping ideas flowing. And doing the Tuesday writing exercises that Ashley Smith posts in Stage 32's Writers' Room helps too.

Thanks Cynna for sharing. I am indebted to Julia for inspiring a new season of my creative writing journey. Best wishes!

William Henderson Right? Sometimes a book like this can get you out of those doldrums and the block that you didn't realise was building up. Rereading it recently was like opening a brand new door for me. I'm also grateful to the fact I've made the time to really fill my well creatively-- being on here, taking part of learning labs. They all help with that process.

A wonderful post, Cynna! Thank you so much for sharing.

David Taylor I get what you mean — those small daily irritations really do bring something genuine to a relationship.

For me, tension often comes from something a bit deeper: the way people are, their temperament, how they move through life.

It’s simply another way of keeping things human, I think.

Personally, I think emotional depth and worldbuilding in sci-fi are two important aspects in the said genre but the former is the engine that drives the story forward.

In all movies, your emotional depth enables your audience to relate to your onscreen characters. Blissful or sad emotions our characters experience as the movies unfolds should resonate with our audience's experiential learning.

Any writer who glorifies worldbuilding at the expense of emotional depth is definitely skating on quicksand.

WH?

Answer: Human beings are social animals that have emotions. Emotional attachment is key. Conversely, worldbuilding , as far as I'm concerned, is largely drawn from reasoning or logic but its end product is steeped in emotional depth. While creating this unique world , you're tactfully appealing to the emotions of your audiences. In a way , I subscribe to the idea that the screenwriter should build their world ( with its own rules ---- dos and don'ts) largely from the emotional depth they intend to.create.

Worldbuilding should enhance the thematic flow of the writer's storyline. Worldbuilding, if expertly handled, has an astounding capacity to shape character dialogue. Dialogue should in turn explore the flowing:

1. What's at stake

2. The fears of characters

3. Expectations

4. Themes

5. Motifs

6. Etc

In short, the better approach between the two is the EMOTIONAL DEPTH TO WORLDBUILDING APPROACH and not the other way round.

Jabulani Pongolani Thanks, Jabulani — that idea really resonates with me.

I often start from a simple question: what does the system expect from people, and how do those expectations quietly shape the way they see themselves?

That kind of soft, well-intentioned pressure can become its own form of constraint.

And when a character finally wants something the system doesn’t consider “useful,” that tension naturally creates emotion — almost like a small rebellion just to feel something real again.

For me, that’s exactly where worldbuilding and emotional depth meet: the mechanics of the world explain why the characters feel the way they do.

In a novel use thoughts, feelings & POV of protagonist & antagonist. Or jump into each of the characters minds in turn. Re scripts, obviously show, don’t tell with visual action/subtext. Add “Universal” human moments EG love, hate, coming of age. Or nuggets of life we can all identify with, eg funny, bizarre, sad, embarrassing. Protagonist has their own inner battle, aswell as the outer conflict with monsters/machines/galaxies etc. Switch camps, so we see through the eyes of aliens too. Many pages of a novel, when adapted to a script, may only be a crisp one liner. Make succinct dialogue count. The new world has its own set of rules. Familiar themes or pre sold concepts such as aliens, outer space etc work well with a unique twist, something we’ve not seen before, more than “same old.” Sci Fi can easily be tailored to a four quadrant age range, depending on the adult content, so consider your target audience.

Debbie Croysdale Thanks so much for your insight, Debbie — I really appreciate the depth of your perspective.

What you said about shifting between inner conflict and larger external forces really speaks to what I’m trying to achieve. I love the idea that the emotional core doesn’t disappear in a high-concept world; it just resonates differently depending on whose eyes we’re looking through.

For me, the key is to let the world’s rules intensify the characters’ private struggles rather than drown them out. When the environment amplifies a character’s fears, desires, or blind spots, even a small emotional moment can feel huge — almost like it carries the weight of the entire system on its shoulders.

That balance between the intimate and the structural is exactly what makes sci-fi so powerful to write.

Thanks again for sharing your approach — it’s genuinely inspiring.

I Posted for a co righter . with about 3 years to live I was told go to school then come on Knowing Il be dead by then this dream is the only thing that keeps me going . maybe it is time to give up and say good night all !

It's not time, Jay A Swendris. I don't know what your doctors have said or why but it's not always about making it. It's about living in the dream in the now by pouring out your stories. No matter how much time you think you have, pour your stories out. They don't have to be perfect. They just have to be poured out onto paper.